In New Guinea, I Hear a Conspiracy Theory About Jews

I had a few responses to comments on my post about Jewish superiority. I agree Richard that the narrative has happened before, of Jews having court power and being expelled or worse. But I feel like this history is too controlling here, producing profound mistrust of the Other and a failure to discuss our power openly. We’re not court power anymore anyway; we’re principals. We’re senators and pollsters and media barons and deputy defense secretaries. I am made uncomfortable by the many threats I read on this site and other places, that the goys are going to push us out again, that kind of talk. But we live in a democracy, and elites have to be scrutinized. WASPs were, in my lifetime, which is a more relevant model for me than Egyptian history or biblical myth in shaping how I will respond to the crisis in American foreign policy, which is the basis of this blog. My country has lost its way. This is no myth, this is the absolute reality, and we have torn apart an Arab society and created a holocaust for 100s of thousands. Iraq has my rachmones, Yiddish for compassion…

I apologize for the naked expression of Jewish elitism, but it’s something I grew up with and have to come to terms with and it’s largely uninterrogated in my community. Also: I do believe that people will accept tribal elites if they don’t help wreck the foreign policy. People accept blacks’ overrepresentation in sports…

Richard here is an another important point. I am reading Irreconcilable Differences, a book about the American Jewish relationship with Israel, by Steven T. Rosenthal, published by Brandeis in 2001. I’m just reading the introduction, but a lot of it is about "the vaunted Israel lobby." Rosenthal says that after the 67 War, "the American Jewish community devoted much of its efforts to political lobbying, which was so effective that by 1970 support of Israel had become a foundation of American foreign policy." So Rosenthal is basically saying there that the basis of America’s support for Israel is the lobby. No, I haven’t gotten into this book, but the question arises, Where was this guy when Walt and Mearsheimer were getting smeared? Why didn’t he come forward? If I’m wrong, I will be happy to correct myself, but the point is that there are many Jews who believe a lot of what W&M wrote and they didn’t come forward. They closed rank, even as the Forward editorial cried, In Dark Times Blame the Jews. I find this intellectually and morally nauseating. Why wasn’t W&M an occasion for forums at Yivo with both sides? Or open discussions in the Forward? No, the community with the greatest intellectual tradition of any in this country demonstrated a tribal bankruptcy on the issue. And meantime an Arab society was on fire.

The flip side of this is that Everyone knows something’s going on. Everyone knows the lobby has power, and the failure to have the conversation allows antisemitic conspiracy theories of the sort that proliferate in my comment section–Jews and Israel are responsible for all that is wrong–to flourish. I think those people are wrong and nuts; they far overstate Jewish power. But we should be seeking the truth here, not shutting down debate. If you’re saying, Richard, that this happened before and didn’t work out well, so we’re not going to talk about it, that’s not USA democratic, and I think it actually hurts Jews.

Scott’s golf story is germane; and it reminds me of a conversation I had 3 years ago. I was in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea, having a beer by the pool with an Australian New Guinean who ran the hotel I was in and his businessman friend. And the hotel owner said to me, "What is it with your foreign policy and Israel? It’s crazy. We hear that the Jews send their kids to the best schools and get them into key positions in the government and media and make sure that the U.S. will never be balanced. Is that true?" I didn’t have a lot to say to the guy. There was some truth in what he was saying though yes it was a conspiracy theory. And so this image of Jewish power, not entirely inaccurate, is held on the very opposite end of the world by an uninformed small businessmen, and by Korean-American immigrants at a golf course in the U.S. Shouldn’t Jews be a part of that conversation?

38 Responses

Todd

April 27, 2008, 11:33 pm

I don't know if anyone can issue a threat on behalf of the nation to do anything to any group of people. However, I do believe that people are getting tired of the Jewish influence in the media and politics. Just this morning, I watched a panel of mostly Jewish pundits try and spin how I will vote, and what I think about the candidates in question. That gets old.

I think I've mostly prefaced my comments by stating that I'm not really sure if Jews are as powerful as Phil states. If they are, and they have driven the chaos of the last 40+ years for self-serving purposes, then I think that most people should have a real problem with that.

Also, some of the best reading I've done on Jewish influence is from Harry Truman's words when talking about how Zionists used his friend Eddie Jacobson to influence the decision to recognize Israel. Truman also felt the influence of Jewish money on politics. I'm not sure what to make of Alfred Lilienthal, but he was blowing the whistle long before W&M, or any of the people usually cited on this site.

MRW.

"I do believe that people will accept tribal elites if they don't help wreck the foreign policy."

You couldn't be more correct. The uppy and downy of who's in and who's out and who's the reigning elite is accepted. And who the hell cares.

But when the reigning elite is diddling with foreign policy with disastrous, possibly catastrophic, results for all our countrymen and innocents in a targeted country with no perceivable benefit to Americans, then derision and hatred sets in. It would be he same if the Italians (Catholic) or the Brits (Protestants) were doing it. The fact that the reigning elite in DC are Jewish neocons whose first love and concern is Israel, and this prompts negative reaction to the policies being put forth by this elite group , then of course they're going to be despised. And no amount of anti-semitism wailing will change that because these ostensible Americans have broken faith with their fellow citizens.

MRW.

April 27, 2008, 11:53 pm

Rowan,

Philip is saying why are Jews being left out of the discussion, whether by design or otherwise. And he's saying that discussion is good and shouldn't be a taboo as if criticizing a Jew is wrong, or allowing non-Jews to have an opinion is unacceptable.

MRW.

April 28, 2008, 12:04 am

I should amend my post at April 27, 2008 at 08:34 PM to read Zionists instead of Jews because Cheney isn't Jewish, and neither is Addington or Bush, for that matter.

Then it makes more sense with the Italian and Brit arguments. Can you imagine what an uproar this country would be in if we were being asked to bomb Australia because England perceived it as a threat to their existence, and the President and VP felt it necessary to nuke AU because Australia was doing what Australians do so fabulously which was tell the Brits to STFU or we'll bomb you back into an Anglo-Saxon enclave. And if the Pres and VP, citing Episcopalian love, said that we are morally obligated as Americans to nuke Australia because it threatened England?

Phil Weiss

April 28, 2008, 12:09 am

i was trying to say that Jews have turned their back on this discussion, saying it's a dangerous discussion, why just look at the holocaust. indeed, one friend of mine has said, phil is trying to start ww3. so we ignore the horrors of iraq and palestine and the special jewish role in producing us policy here (podhoretz's ww4) out of defensiveness and fear; but meanwhile people arent stupid and a conversation is going on in the shadows

as long as you go on indiscriminately using the undefined term "jews" you will go on drifting before the winds of your own associative processes. On the other hand, once you define what you mean by "jews" rigorously, you will find it almost impossible to say anything – your grammatical subject will evaporate.

Arendt's solution is the most relevant : she seldom discusses "jews as such" but rather talks pragmatically about the fate of the people defined as "jews" by various internal and external hegemonic groups, primarily the self-appointed "jewish leaderships" which she is mainly concerned to criticise. It is pointless to impute views to "jews as such," unless you have internalised the exploitative stance of the self-appointed "jewish leaderships" and wish to replace them, impress them or insinuate yourself into one of them.

otto

April 28, 2008, 2:33 am

And the hotel owner said to me, "What is it with your foreign policy and Israel? It's crazy. We hear that the Jews send their kids to the best schools and get them into key positions in the government and media and make sure that the U.S. will never be balanced. Is that true?" I didn't have a lot to say to the guy. There was some truth in what he was saying though yes it was a conspiracy theory.

Just how sophisticated do you expect an Australian hotel owner in New Guinea to be in the way he talks about this issue? One of the considerable features of this debate is the effort to rule out comments that are 80% true and certainly true-enough given the way that people talk about politics and the media in general, in favour of comments which are sophisticatedly drawing lots of fine distinctions but whose substance is 100% bullshit.

I'll tell you what, Phil, why don't you try the "my people" bullshit again. That always works, because everybody knows subliminally that "ha-am ha-yehudi" is a racial concept, and they are endlessly grateful to you and your like for glossing it with pseudo-lyrical euphemisms, so that they can feel better about their own respective racisms.

Richard Witty

Again, I'll come back to a question that I asked you earlier. Do you make too much money?

I've not been to your new house, or you to mine, but I can't imagine that it is ostentatious, or that you have $5 million in investments (and that is a small number).

The point is that the term "we" is misused, except in very limited respect. There is no guilt by association.

I doubt that you as a Jew, are a beneficiary of other individual Jew's wealth or power.

When individual Jews even gather their resources together to defend Israel (even in misguided ways), its NOT an example of selfishness. It is an effort at charity, helping some others than "we".

I know that when you, or your mother, or my mother, or I think of what is "we", our first reference is our family and friends. Our next reference depends. Sometimes its my home town, sometimes its the states, sometimes its Jewish community (and focused in Israel).

I think that is a good thing.

The issues around how we support is an open question, with active debate about what that entails, ranging from the expansionistic, to the defensive, to the accepting, to the very generous.

"So Rosenthal is basically saying there that the basis of America's support for Israel is the lobby. No, I haven't gotten into this book, but the question arises, Where was this guy when Walt and Mearsheimer were getting smeared? Why didn't he come forward?"

Different theses, stated in very different ways, I expect (from your summary. I haven't read the Rosenthal book.)

Rowan pointed out similarly, that the issue is not a new thesis in the states. And, Walt/Mearsheimer did NOT sufficiently distinguish the fascist invocation from the rational inquiry.

"I find this intellectually and morally nauseating. "

The language of the initial Walt/Mearsheimer attack DID strike me as an assault of "we" (that I do identify with, including Israel and included inferences to the fascist invocation of "Jews control the media", "Jews control the leaders", "Jews control the money", and in only slightly different language).

In that initial work (the magazine article and accompanying speech), they used their academic credentials to get published, their academic staffing and credential to get work from graduate students, but did NOT use their academic standards of avoiding polemic, getting prior peer review and conducting rigorous editing.

It does not add up well by my understanding.

The critical public neglect that I see is the neglect to be talking realistically about a better thesis, a possible one, even one that can be made possible.

Rather than learn enough to make a better proposal, and develop more humane influence for that better proposal (both behind the scenes and in public consciousness), the "solutions" proposed are dull (boycotts, etc.) and involve collective punishment (and collective guilt) without the awareness of it (often in the name of opposing collective punishment).

One reason that Jews (or probably any other "we") dislike the public display of collective guilt, is that it often ends up collectively punishing one's own community "we".

The reason that I see that that ends up happening, is that the primary motivation is related to the guilt (how one is perceived), that that is what the content of the discussion is about. But, the "real work", the proposal and EFFORT for a better solution is ignored or only used as a means.

Even with dissent, clarifying what is being objected to specifically, and focusing on that.

I remember a line from the Gandhi movie in which he was asked "Now that you've got the British on the run, why aren't you driving the nail in?" (a very very rough paraphrase, forgive me if I missed it).

His response was "Our focus was on removing the salt tax. It would be immoral of me to take advantage about something that we didn't communicate."

There were a few messages in the response. One was focus and clarity on specific political fulcrum. The second was his humility and knowledge of interdependance, the ethics of regarding even his enemy as human, deserving, with liberty, and the capacity to change. The third was his confidence. He did not need to "defeat", in the sense of ridicule.

and you don't have the guts to attack your own leaders, Richard, for two reasons : one, they hold the threat of the anti-Semitism they themselves induce and control over your heads, and, two, they use the magic hocus pocus of religion to play on your deliberately maintained, infantile psychological weaknesses.

JIm Haygood

Man, you never change your tune, do you? You seem to be confusing publishing a book with submitting an article to a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, where polemic is indeed out of place, and peer review is a must.

Nobody is obliged to have their book peer reviewed, although some do voluntarily. While M&W have been criticized for various reasons, bad editing has not been prominent among them.

But of course, the real issue is being concealed with your usual obscurantism: "peer review" is a stalking horse for suppressing publication, closing ranks, and not having any conversation about the Lobby. Peer review would have shut down Galileo and Copernicus as well.

You see individuals as empowered and important when they're working FOR Israel ("When individual Jews even gather their resources together to defend Israel (even in misguided ways), its NOT an example of selfishness. It is an effort at charity, helping some others than 'we'."). Yet dissent, you say, can only be effectively directed at the very powerful.

Nope; dissent is targeted at changing minds at all levels — they all have a democratic vote. In dissenting against the Lobby, one mindset I seek to change is the bizarre notion that "when individual Jews … defend Israel (even in misguided ways) … it is an effort at charity." Politically defending a nuclear-armed secular government as "charity" — this blows my mind.

Richard Witty

April 28, 2008, 7:35 am

You didn't hear my accusation of bait and switch, Jim, on the part of Walt/Mearsheimer, parading their academic credentials (as if the study was of that standard), but abandoning their academic standards?

Its not unlike the parading of Chomsky, a scholar for his linguistic work, but merely an opinion on foreign policy.

I'm for dissent. I STRONGLY believe that an alternative approach to the complicity with expansion should be articulated. I just don't think generalizing in word, in deed, is it.

It says nothing except, "I'm frustrated".

Everybody is frustrated, but about different things.

Better that we actually work. Also, the effort to change the minds OF the powerful is needed, and by convincing, not by coercion if possible.

That the "Israel Lobby" does regard their work as service or charity, indicates that they do it because they believe they are pursuing good. Force won't change their belief.

A better and specific proposal that accomplishes the criteria of what they are seeking, would.

For example, a few months ago, I and Phil reported attending a presentation (at different locales and times) by a joint Palestinian/Israeli peace seeking "think-tank".

The premise of the think-tank's existence was that solutions that they articulated had to accomplish the success of both's objectives. And, there had to be a way to get from here to there.

I believe that both conditions are possible, that there is a proposal that constructs a relationship of two healthy and interracting societies, and that its possible to get there.

Jim Haygood

April 28, 2008, 8:45 am

.

"You didn't hear my accusation of bait and switch, Jim, on the part of Walt/Mearsheimer, parading their academic credentials (as if the study was of that standard), but abandoning their academic standards?"

I didn't hear it because it wasn't there. You made three specific charges against M&W:

(1) Polemic
(2) No peer review
(3) Poor editing

Each of those charges I addressed. Without rebutting them, you now seamlessly segue to two new charges, "bait and switch" and "abandoning academic standards."

It's impossible to debate with a shifting, shapeless gaseous cloud, spewing obscurantist slogans such as "Everybody is frustrated, but about different things." Your artful dodging is the internalized, existential deception of the passive- aggressive personality. Honesty with yourself (the prerequisite for honesty with others) would extinguish your personality. Strip away the endless onion shells of rationalization and rhetorical tail-chasing, and you're left with nothing. It's a silly game, unless your life depends on it. Gulp!

Madrid

"No, the community with the greatest intellectual tradition of any in this country demonstrated a tribal bankruptcy on the issue."

This is part of your Jewish supremicism that people find so distasteful, Phil. But the other thing is that I am not even sure it is the least bit accurate.

The US is not known for being a hotbed of "intellectuals" like France is, but if you named the three most important philosophical names, you would put William James, John Rawls, and Ricard Rorty there for sure, not a one who is Jewish. You might include political philosophy as well, and then you would have to include all of the founding fathers, Jefferson, Madison, etc, not a one Jewish.

Among the 10 or so best American fiction writers, only Philip Roth rates up there with the best.

If you are talking about the elite universities, yes, Jews are disproportionately represented, but being a university professor at Harvard does not insure that you are going to be remembered even 20 years after your death within an American intellectual community that is, after all, incredibly marginalized as it is.

bondo

April 28, 2008, 9:01 am

splitting hairs about defining a jew is to divert to choke any discussion.

…and phil…

"..hotel owner said to me, "What is it with your foreign policy and Israel? It's crazy. We hear that the Jews send their kids to the best schools and get them into key positions in the government and media and make sure that the U.S. will never be balanced. Is that true?" I didn't have a lot to say to the guy. There was some truth in what he was saying though yes it was a conspiracy theory. And so this image of Jewish power, not entirely inaccurate, is held on the very opposite end of the world by an uninformed small businessmen,"

you still hide and protect your bros. there was absolute truth to the small businessman's comment. if people the world over, looking in from the outside, can see, i would say it is true. especially when i see it from the inside.

bondo

April 28, 2008, 9:06 am

"If you are talking about the elite universities, yes, Jews are disproportionately represented"

my experience with them in class rooms with me is that their admittance was purchased. professors who are jewish – the same. eg, why would kagan(s), dershowitz, lipstadt, to take some known names be profs. all are mediocre at best.

Madrid

Richard Witty

April 28, 2008, 9:10 am

"In that initial work (the magazine article and accompanying speech), they used their academic credentials to get published, their academic staffing and credential to get work from graduate students, but did NOT use their academic standards of avoiding polemic, getting prior peer review and conducting rigorous editing."

I'm sorry you didn't read my post clearly, Jim.

I'm not interested in repeating the criticism of Walt/Mearsheimer. I will though if continued to be presented as authoritative.

I'm most interested in suggesting to Phil that their work constitutes only a single reference, rather than an world-scale epiphany. If he derives insights from that work, wonderful. That is DIFFERENT from his approach here which is of cheerleading squad, of which any analysis is understood in reference to those two publications (the article and book).

Jim Haygood

April 28, 2008, 9:38 am

.

"I'm sorry you didn't read my post clearly, Jim."

Uh huh. I was going to guess that the next step in the cat-and-mouse game would be circling back to the original post. You DEFINED "no academic standards" in terms of three charges (polemic, peer review, editing); I rebutted those; you introduced a new charge of "bait & switch," while simply reiterating "no academic standards"; and here we are.

The REAL issue here is that in your mind, directly confronting an argument is intolerable — even though conversation, like tennis, is impossible without returning the opponent's serve. So you resort to a passive tactic which is even more aggressive: dismissing others' remarks as "frustration" or "rage" is a passive, devious way of asserting that "your views are just childish screams of emotion, which I won't dignify with a response."

Cornered, the passive-aggresive resorts to even more astonishing calumnies: "Do you make too much money? I've not been to your new house, or you to mine, but I can't imagine that it is ostentatious, or that you have $5 million in investments (and that is a small number)."

Utterly irrelevant, but unsurpassed for sheer meanness and cattiness. Phil, like the dying Brutus, might reasonably exclaim, "Et tu, Ricardo?", as his "friend" twists his sharpened nail file in his back.

Ultimately, your tangled coils of pretzel logic are a counterproductive attempt at self-administered therapy, which actually only serve to drive you deeper into a grim psychological dungeon of your own devise.

bondo

April 28, 2008, 9:45 am

…but we, the non jew, should never forget(and never forgive?) all that the jews, need we to define?, have given to us and only to us – the non jew.

we, without jews, would not exist. there would be nothing called medicine, law, arts, literature, highways, commerce, entertainment, agriculture, airtravel, sports, society, culture, news, restaurants, pizza, government. all these listed and more are gifts of the jews. remove a jew from a field and that field collapses. no other group member can replace.

remove dershowitz or summers from harvard, harvard sinks. remove lewis from princeton, princeton collapses. lipstadt from emory – back to a cow pasture. my jewish dentist, though sued 2 known times, cannot be replaced by a non jew dentist. same for MDs. only jews understand medicine. their knowledge and skills are from 8000 – 9000 years of non comparable suffering. maybe, the years arent enough. 4 million is better.

…and what other group brags so much about itself? bragging is another gift of the jews (need we to define down to the nano punctuation?).

It just struck me that the reason Phil got sacked from the New York Observer was nothing to do with his opinions, which are totally shapeless and thus harmless. It was more likely because he is simply no good as a JOURNALIST.

bondo

April 28, 2008, 10:35 am

"Hitler Killed My Father
He wouldn't talk about the years he spent in Nazi concentration camps. But they never left him."

Shirley Paryzer Levy
NEWSWEEK
Apr 26, 2008
"I am approaching another anniversary of my father's death. It will be more than a dozen years since he passed away. I still don't agree with the cause of death on the certificate. The cause of death, according to the doctor, was cancer(did he smoke?). That was not what killed my father. The cause of death was Adolf Hitler. My father was a Holocaust survivor. He lived and breathed being a Holocaust survivor. It defined him. It is on his tombstone. His whole life in America revolved around World War II. It was evident in his everyday life."

how does that make him any different from 99.99% of other jews? including the 3rd and 4th generation non- hitler experienceing jews. maybe your father's mental problem (and 99.99% of other jews) was the problem for your father and is your problem?

Madrid

April 28, 2008, 10:50 am

Sorry, just realized I left off another biggy: T.S. Eliot, but he was an anti-semite, right? So he doesn't count.

Perhaps I self-censored him, given that every time I have read about Eliot in the past 10 years, the commentator has begun by either apologizing for or dismissing him for Eliot's supposed anti-semitism.

American

April 28, 2008, 11:12 am

I must say Philip you have a huge personal problem with your Jewish elitism thing.

Most of us recongize it for what it is….overcompensation for historical feelings of powerlessness and inferiority….the victim and powerless Jews now wants to assert their power for the first time in their history.

Like I said to another blood and guts Israeli zionist on here…you are like monkey's beating your chest and pretending to be silverbacks.

You are way overdoing your Jewish power…which is mainly jewish money from a select groups of Jews. And that money has had undue influence…which people now are seeeing.
Problem is you are 2% of the population here and sooner or later your attitude of "Jews now rule the US" is going to backfire in your face. Now you can take that as a threat, or you can recongize that is exactly what happens to any elites, Jews or gentiles, who go too far. So if it is true that Jews rule the US, they will get knocked down in due time…if it isn't true than we are back to the picture of jews beating their chest like monkeys and pretending to be something.

As for..""I do believe that people will accept tribal elites if they don't help wreck the foreign policy."…..people will accept tribal elites? the key word being "tribal" I assume.

You may be anti zionist and anti occuption but that statement and your obsession over Jews wielding power and being in charge of the US makes you a sicko and anything but American in your beliefs and outlook. In fact you are a lot like David Duke, proclaiming the superiority of Jews.

Sorry to have to say this after reading your blog for this long but you are seriously messed up man.

Polly

April 28, 2008, 11:34 am

"It's impossible to debate with a shifting, shapeless gaseous cloud, spewing obscurantist slogans such as "Everybody is frustrated, but about different things." Your artful dodging is the internalized, existential deception of the passive- aggressive personality. Honesty with yourself (the prerequisite for honesty with others) would extinguish your personality. Strip away the endless onion shells of rationalization and rhetorical tail-chasing, and you're left with nothing. It's a silly game, unless your life depends on it. Gulp!"

Wow! Brilliant! I'm actually rolling on the floor laughing at that one. But as Maxwell Smart once said "If only he had used his baton for niceness instead of evil and rottenness!"

Good comment Jim. You are aware you are dealing with the mainstream: make-it-vanish-into-thin-air-magic-spell? Richard's problem is he is only been given the magic wand and the spell and he is not allowed to let it show. [conspiracy no. 3)

Polly

April 28, 2008, 11:46 am

"Ultimately, your tangled coils of pretzel logic are a counterproductive attempt at self-administered therapy, which actually only serve to drive you deeper into a grim psychological dungeon of your own devise."

Oh God! Stop it! This is so fucking funny yet it's all being wasted on Witty!

Charles Keating

Charles Keating

April 29, 2008, 4:41 pm

Richard Witty says the W & M view of American foreign policy is heavily slanted. Witty outrageously ignores the forty years that average Ameicans had nothing to view about Israel except Paul Newman in his Hollywood opus.

Charles Keating

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